Abstract
The rapid advancement of electronic devices and fabrication technologies has further promoted the field of wearables and smart textiles. However, most of the current efforts in textile electronics focus on a single modality and cover a small area. Here, we have developed a tailored, electronic textile conformable suit (E-TeCS) to perform large-scale, multimodal physiological (temperature, heart rate, and respiration) sensing in vivo. This platform can be customized for various forms, sizes and functions using standard, accessible and high-throughput textile manufacturing and garment patterning techniques. Similar to a compression shirt, the soft and stretchable nature of the tailored E-TeCS allows intimate contact between electronics and the skin with a pressure value of around ~25 mmHg, allowing for physical comfort and improved precision of sensor readings on skin. The E-TeCS can detect skin temperature with an accuracy of 0.1 °C and a precision of 0.01 °C, as well as heart rate and respiration with a precision of 0.0012 m/s2 through mechano-acoustic inertial sensing. The knit textile electronics can be stretched up to 30% under 1000 cycles of stretching without significant degradation in mechanical and electrical performance. Experimental and theoretical investigations are conducted for each sensor modality along with performing the robustness of sensor-interconnects, washability, and breathability of the suit. Collective results suggest that our E-TeCS can simultaneously and wirelessly monitor 30 skin temperature nodes across the human body over an area of 1500 cm2, during seismocardiac events and respiration, as well as physical activity through inertial dynamics.
Highlights
In recent years, we have witnessed a vast advancement towards flexible and stretchable devices[1,2]
Several efforts have been conducted to integrate electronics into textiles, for instance, by coating yarns with metal or printing conductive inks on fabrics to serve as electrodes for electrophysiology[14,15], sewing and attaching functional threads and fabrics[16], weaving electronics fabricated on polyimide strips for humidity[17], temperature[17], pulse oximetry[18], and gas[19] sensing, as well as developing electronic fibers for seamless woven electronic textiles[20]
We have developed a technique of combining thin, customizable conformable electronic devices, including interconnect lines and off-the-shelf integrated circuits, with plastic substrates that can be woven into knitted textile using an accessible and high-throughput manufacturing approach
Summary
We have witnessed a vast advancement towards flexible and stretchable devices[1,2]. Soft and skin-like electronics in the form of a patch, with wireless capabilities, have been developed to precisely detect various physiological signals from the human body, such as electrophysiology[6], temperature[7], pulse oximetry[8], blood pressure[9], hydration[10], and others[11]. They are made either by designing a particular structure that can withstand strain on a deformable polymeric substrate, or by using intrinsically stretchable materials[12]. The interconnect strips have multiple islands of pads with an area of 1 mm × 4 mm in between
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